The Venomous Abyss — Bosses 1–7 Guide

The Venomous Abyss is Midnight Season 2's raid tier, an eight-boss dive into the Vaults of Atal'Utek to stop Ula'tek's brood before Zul'jan and Malacrass can unleash it on Azeroth. The full organized-raid ladder — Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic — opens on August 18, with Raid Finder unlocking one wing per week and Story Mode arriving alongside Wing 2. This page covers Normal/Heroic mechanics plus the Mythic-only changes for the first seven bosses, from the opener through The Coiled Altar. The eighth and final boss, Ula'tek, has its own dedicated page — see the link in that section below. For entrances, the wing structure, item levels, tier tokens, Great Vault credit, and a week-one gearing plan, see the Venomous Abyss Raid Overview. Boss abilities and tuning are still subject to hotfixes once the raid goes live — check the Patch Notes page for anything newer than this guide's last-updated date.

🐉 Nek'zali the Soulcoiler

The opening boss. Nek'zali alternates between an active melee phase and a two-Echo intermission, and the entire fight is gated by an Energy bar that determines when the boss casts its enrage-style wipe mechanic, Uncoiled Rage.

Phase 1 & Phase 2 (identical mechanics)

• Soulcoil Ignition — Nek'zali teleports to the room's center and applies 5 stacks of Soulcoil Rite to everyone; on Heroic it also adds Ritual Burn. Save healing cooldowns for the overlap, and dodge the Anguished Echoes that spawn and drift through the room during the cast. Each cast grants Nek'zali 25 Energy — four casts brings the boss to 100 without help from adds.
• Restless Amani adds — coffins glow in two areas before adds spawn; move Nek'zali toward whichever area has the most glowing coffins so the adds can be cleaved. They walk toward a central Well behind a magic-absorb shield; break the shield with magic damage (not Hunters — they hit Physical) before they reach it, since each Amani that reaches the Well grants Nek'zali 5 bonus Energy. Death Knights can Death Grip stray adds in for cleave. On Heroic, dead Amani leave a Vessel of Awakening and apply Corpse Blight to nearby players.
• Essence Rend — pulls a random player toward the center before applying a dispellable debuff. Walk to the room's edge first; healers should hold the dispel until the player has reached the edge, since dispelling drops a Latent Cultist that acts as permanent area denial.
• Possession Barrage — targets the active tank with raid-wide damage that scales down the farther the tank is from the raid. The damage comes from ghosts that detonate on contact and spawn more Restless Amani — if another player stands in the ghost's path, it detonates early for more damage. The tank should move straight away from the raid, and nobody should stand between the boss and the tank. Melee damage from Nek'zali applies Hollowing Strikes (reduces healing received); tanks should swap at 5–6 stacks, which lines up naturally with the next Possession Barrage.

Intermission

• Soul Transfer summons two Echoes of Jawae one at a time (first on the west side, second opposite once the first dies) — focus the active Echo while cleaving nearby Restless Amani, which keep spawning through the intermission.
• Hungering Pyre is a group soak centered on the tank; position the active Echo over a corpse pile first so the soak also clears corpses. On Heroic, players who don't soak get Slithering Flame instead and should use it to burn any stray corpses the main soak missed.

Phase 2 restart

Energy resets to 0 when the boss reactivates — pop Bloodlust/Heroism here and race to kill Nek'zali before Energy hits 100 again. The one addition is Invoke, which reapplies Soulcoil Rite so it no longer falls off (stacking raid damage from Ritual Burn for the rest of the fight) and repositions the Essence Rend images around the room.

Mythic-only: Grasping Depths

The whole raid gets pulled toward the Well and takes ongoing Shadow damage until a Drowned Echo is killed; anyone pulled fully in is trapped in Immortal Coil for up to a minute. After the Echo dies, avoid the Swirling Spirit beams — players can't re-enter the Well for another minute (Soul Exhaustion), so plan three rotating teams of 4 DPS + 1 healer. Invoke also becomes an interrupt that silences anyone it hits for 3 seconds on Mythic.

⚔ Entombed Sentinels

A two-target fight where the Sentinels don't share health and are tanked by two separate raid groups. The core rule: keep them at least 40 yards apart, or they gain Ula'tek's Dominance and take 99% less damage.

Main phase

• Split the raid in half, one group per Sentinel, and keep DPS balanced between the two so neither heals itself back up via Vitriolic Stasis during the intermission.
• Mark of Acid / Mark of Blood — stacking damage from proximity to each boss; stay with your assigned group and avoid crossing sides. Healers should stack cooldowns for the end of each main-phase sequence, and tanks should swap which Sentinel they're on after every intermission to let stacks reset.
• Breath of Ula'tek side — step on Toxic Droplets to destroy them before they erupt; on Heroic, destroyed droplets release Living Venom that travels back to the boss, so reposition to the sides after clearing droplets. Kill the Venom Coagulation add on sight — it deals raid-wide damage while alive. Tanks mitigate the escalating Empowering Slam hits until the next boss swap.
• Blood of Ula'tek side — soak Unstable Miasma as a group (it applies stacking Clinging Murk, which leaves a Blood Venom pool on Heroic when it expires). Dispel Blighted Blood immediately so you can fit a second dispel in before it reapplies; a naturally-expiring Heroic Blighted Blood also drops a Blood Venom pool — position new pools near existing ones to save space. Tanks track Bloodvenom Injection stacks the same way as Empowering Slam.

Intermission — Vitriolic Stasis

Both bosses charge to the middle and balance health to match whichever is higher, while the raid solves Helical Toxins: every player gets an icon showing 1, 2, or 3 toxin stacks (shown as linked orbs overhead), and running into another player merges your counts — they must total exactly 4 (1+3 or 2+2). On Heroic, a collision that would push the total above 4 is lethal instead of just knocking players back. After the intermission, each raid group returns to its original side and tanks swap targets.

Mythic-only: Shifting Protovenom

Random players are contaminated with a periodic Plague DoT. Two affected players who touch each other neutralize both effects harmlessly; an affected player colliding with an unaffected one instead triggers Protovenom Eruption — damage and a knockback to everyone within 10 yards. Identify your pair before moving and give marked players a clear lane.

⚔ The Lost Explorers

A three-boss council fight against Trader Gebbo, First Mate Nama, and Scrollsage Iku. None share health, but stacking all three within 30 yards triggers United Defense and cuts their damage taken by 99% — so cleave two together while keeping the third apart, and never let all three overlap.

Core mechanics

• Throw Junk scatters crates that players break by walking over them (stacking Splinters bleed on break). One crate always hides a Grab Fish — carry it into melee range of whichever boss you want to trigger next and use the Extra Action Button once Mor'zahi energy hits 90–95%. Feeding a boss locks in that boss's ultimate permanently (Disgusting Fish) and prevents re-selecting it; missing the window before Mor'zahi's Empower cast finishes wipes the raid. The recommended ultimate order is Gebbo → Nama → Iku.
• Shell Spin (Nama) — a frontal cone of three turtle shells aimed at a random melee player, stunning for 4 seconds on a hit. Melee should stay close to Nama and bait it toward the platform edge, then step clear.
• Icebound Flames (Iku) needs a 2–3 person interrupt rotation; Blink Nova teleports Iku to a marked ranged player for raid damage that scales down with distance from the group.
• Tanks swap after each Shredding Shards stack from Iku, watch for Nama's stacking Steady Strikes, and reposition Nama between Gebbo and Iku to keep two-target cleave going without tripling up the bosses.

Boss ultimates

• Trader Gebbo — Explosive Surprise: marked players carry bombs to the room's edge, away from the Bouncy Mushrooms. When a Blast Wave nears a mushroom, run into it to jump the wave; mushrooms are one-use but multiple players can share a short window on the same one.
• First Mate Nama — Mighty Thud: three marked players get leaped to based on distance — put one in melee and two at separated ranged spots so the soak circles don't overlap. Split the raid into two teams that alternate soaking across the three hits.
• Scrollsage Iku — Frostfire Volley: Fire missiles (ranged) and Frost missiles (melee) must be spread to the room's edge; running over the opposite element's pool clears it but deals raid-wide damage, so save healing cooldowns for this.

Mythic-only: Relic Rupture

Breaking a crate applies Splinters to the whole raid; a crate left unbroken for 25 seconds deals extra raid-wide damage on top of that, so crates can no longer be ignored or hoarded.

⚔ Vashnik the Malignant

An add-management fight built around three elemental fountains (Flame, Blood, Shadow) that Vashnik periodically empowers.

• Imbibe empowers the two fountains closest to Vashnik roughly every 90 seconds, granting a 1.5-minute infusion that boosts that venom type's damage by 100% and the associated adds' health by 50% per stack. Tanks should position Vashnik between the two fountains they want empowered and rotate around the room using no altar more than twice in a row (e.g. Shadow+Flame → Flame+Blood → Blood+Shadow). All summoned adds crawl toward the central Malignant Cavity and must die before reaching it or they trigger Malignant Burst. Kill priority: Burning Venoms (Fire) → Clotting Venom (Blood) → Shrouded Venoms (Shadow).
• Fire adds deal raid-wide damage from Burning Presence while alive and trigger a second raid hit, Caustic Surge, on death — on Heroic that hit applies a DoT, so avoid killing two Burning Venoms simultaneously. Exploding Infection marks a player to run away and detonate at range; healers can dispel it to trigger the explosion sooner once they're clear.
• Blood add is immune to CC and splits into two, then four, smaller adds as it's damaged down. Siphoning Infection blocks normal healing on its target — other players must stand in the affected player's circle so they can steal health back via Siphon Blood.
• Shadow adds are lowest priority and should be slowed while other adds are cleared; they trigger Umbral Ejection ground zones on death. Stygian Infection leaves a damaging trail and blocks healing — affected players keep moving but stay in range of healers.
• Plague Froth fires four cardinal Plague Wave lines when it expires — take it away from the raid and aim the lines outward. Tanks swap on 1 stack of Dripping Fangs. On Heroic, spread out to soak Catalytic Bile ground zones.

Mythic-only: Imbibe and Malignant Tumors

Each Imbibe cast now also pulls Malignant Tumors from the fountains, which start with 99% damage reduction (Hardened Tumor) until struck by a Plague Wave. Malignant Burst also becomes a stacking one-minute DoT, raising the cost of letting an add reach the Cavity.

⚔ Sszorak

A tank-combo and positioning fight punctuated by a wind-knockback intermission every two minutes.

• Apex Predator — Sszorak cycles through two Ravage, two Mutilate, and one Tempest in random order (Tempest is never first or last). Swap tanks after the first Ravage or Mutilate hit; face Ravage away from the raid and use a defensive, and soak Mutilate as a group to split the damage (a Blood DK can solo it with Vampiric Blood + Anti-Magic Shell). Dodge the tornadoes from Tempest. On Heroic, Mutilate applies a 500% damage-taken debuff, so you need two full soak groups unless you have a Blood DK.
• Venomous Surge — affected players drop Viscous Cysts at pre-assigned raid markers, placed opposite the active wind tunnels on the room's edge (the wind motes tell you the intermission's push order). On Heroic, Sszorak also casts Caustic Claws during this, dropping Caustic Residue pools (30% extra damage taken while standing in one) — tank the boss near the edge so these pools get cleared by the intermission's knockback.
• Raging Crosswinds pushes most of the raid in one of two directions — pair up with someone going the opposite way so you collide mid-air and both get knocked back to your starting spot instead of flying off.
• Tanks also track a separate stacking debuff, Corroding Venom, and should swap around 6 stacks to line up with the Apex Predator combo swaps.

Intermission — Howling Maelstrom

Wind tunnels around the room activate in the order shown by their wind motes, pushing players toward the room's center; get pushed into the Viscous Cyst opposite whichever tunnel is active to bounce back toward the middle instead of off the platform. Sszorak takes 30% increased damage for the duration (Dig In) — plan DPS cooldowns for it.

Mythic-only: Serpent's Fury

Sszorak marks a player (typically whoever is furthest away) and builds rage; once 14+ players are within 8 yards of the marked player, the boss dumps its rage into To the Slaughter and charges them, applying Virulence beams to anyone hit that must be spread apart or they reapply. Raging Crosswinds also fires in all four cardinal directions on Mythic, making pairing harder.

⚔ The Twin Fangs

Vexhul and Ithraz fight simultaneously without sharing health, built around a permanent stacking debuff, Eternal Venom, that only comes off through specific soaks — on Heroic, hitting 10 stacks kills you instantly.

Vexhul

• Caustic Deluge pushes the active tank back while spawning Caustic Globules nearby — players with low Eternal Venom stacks should soak them, and avoid grabbing multiple orbs unless your stack count allows it.
• Venomous Emergence spawns three adds in the center that apply an Eternal Venom stack to the whole raid on arrival and repeatedly beam random players with Corrosive Spit — kill these first, and targeted players should plant briefly so nobody else eats the beam.
• Stir the Depths sends slow-moving waves across the arena; track where they originate so you're not caught off guard.

Ithraz

• Stone Breaker knocks the tank back into three sequential soak zones — stand in the first as it spawns and track the order of the next two; missing any of the three causes heavy raid damage. Taunt-swap after the set.
• Coiling Ichor sends several players to the platform edge to drop a permanent Congealed Gore pool; the debuff's radius shrinks over time so later drops can go closer together.
• Ravenous Feast is three consecutive group soaks that each strip one Eternal Venom stack and knock players back — plan positioning around the knockback. On Heroic, each hit also applies Feasted, so no player can soak more than one of the three and you need three separate teams.

Intermission — Submerge

After two mechanic cycles, both bosses submerge. Vexhul channels a rotating Vile Flood beam — watch the orbs circling Vexhul before the cast to read its direction, and note it always starts on the tank holding Vexhul, so the raid can move opposite the tank to dodge it early. Ithraz simultaneously drops Sanguine Storm ground pools that must be sidestepped while still tracking the beam; on Heroic, standing in a Congealed Gore pool slows you by 60%, making the beam much harder to outrun. The fight enrages roughly 8 minutes in, by which point the platform is largely out of clean space.

Mythic-only additions

Dying under Eternal Venom now spawns extra Caustic Globules. Globules can also gain a Barbed Bulwark shield from the tank's Blood Torrent debuff that must be interrupted before soaking, or the soaker takes damage and gets knocked back. New adds from Rouse the Brood need dedicated interrupters at each spawn point, and Ravenous Feast soaks now leave a Tainted Blood pool that must be re-soaked within 8 seconds of the knockback.

⚔ The Coiled Altar

The penultimate encounter is a three-phase fight against Zul'jan and Hex Lord Malacrass, ending with both active simultaneously.

Phase 1 — Zul'jan

• Stay stacked near Zul'jan to simplify healing through Fangs of the Coiled Altar (raid AoE plus a tank hit, Twinfang Toxin) and edge-spawned Noxious Ground zones.
• Toxic Deluge leaves Coalesced Venom orbs; assigned players pick them up and carry them (Volatile Venom) to a stack point before the debuff expires and drops the orb. Destroying orbs triggers raid-wide Venom Rupture, which becomes a stacking DoT on Heroic — don't pop too many orbs at once. Tanks clear the stacked orbs with Sever, a frontal cone, and taunt-swap after every cast.
• Guillotine must hit at least 5 players — use mobility cooldowns to get clear of Widow's Kiss before it detonates. On Heroic, soakers get Guillotined (500% more damage from the next hit), requiring two separate half-raid soak groups.
• Dispel Venomfang promptly and watch for roaming Axegrinder blades, especially while carrying an orb or fleeing Widow's Kiss. Any unclaimed Coalesced Venom orbs detonate the moment Zul'jan dies.

Phase 2 — Hex Lord Malacrass

• Stack behind Malacrass toward one side of the arena. Dreadmarch mind-controls several players who walk toward the nearest ledge — break their absorb shield (stacking on the boss lets passive cleave do it fast) before they jump, which spawns Manifestations of Dread that fixate via Unnerving Fixation. Fixated players lead their ghost to an assigned stack point and face it to hold it still for Soul Sever, the tank's frontal cleave — which also applies Gravebound to anyone hit, requiring them to collect three Soul Fragments or die.
• Gloombomb marks ranged players to walk away and detonate, also requiring three Soul Fragments to be collected; on Heroic it applies Gravebound too, so overlapping with another marked player is lethal.
• On Heroic, an add from Spiritcackle needs 2–3 dedicated interrupters on its Wail of Terror cast — interrupting teleports it, and melee cleave it down if it lands nearby. Eternal Nightfall gives Malacrass a Veil of Twilight shield that must be broken and the cast interrupted; delaying the interrupt to the last moment maximizes DPS uptime. Clear all Manifestations before Malacrass hits 0% to avoid a messy transition, and move off the edge before the killing blow.

Intermission — Soulbinding

Malacrass links to Zul'jan, healing him via Ghastly Regeneration but making him take 100% increased damage — use Bloodlust and DPS cooldowns here. Fragments of Malacrass crawl toward Zul'jan and heal the bosses via Reclaim Essence if they connect; spread around the boss and intercept each Fragment, staggering soaks (each triggers raid-wide Spirit Erasure damage) rather than grabbing several at once.

Phase 3

Both bosses fight together with all Phase 1 and 2 mechanics active. They don't share health, but killing one enrages the other, so keep damage even and both bosses stacked for cleave efficiency.

Mythic-only additions

One Coalesced Venom orb mutates into a Virulent Cyst that keeps launching new orbs via Caustic Secretion every 6 seconds, and some orbs become Virulent Mutation instead, dealing continuous raid damage and chain-exploding nearby orbs when picked up. Guillotined becomes permanent, and Axegrinder blades stop despawning, so safe floor space keeps shrinking through the phase. In Phase 2, Manifestations of Dread become invisible to everyone except the player they're currently fixating, and two touching Manifestations both deal ongoing damage to their targets — the Mythic Spiritcackle add also summons a shielded Soulcoiler that must be weakened with Gloombomb hits before it can be killed.

🐉 Ula'tek

The great shame of the Amani empire — the vast complex of Atal'Utek was built to imprison this weapon because it proved as much of a threat as the enemy it was meant to destroy. Ula'tek is the eighth and final boss, a three-phase fight with an intermission driven by area-denial venom and constant egg spawns. It's substantial enough to warrant its own page — see the dedicated Ula'tek — Venomous Abyss Final Boss Guide for the full stage-by-stage breakdown, Heroic/Mythic changes, and drop table.

📜 Loot, Rewards, and Logistics

Item levels by boss band, the Mythic-only 344 item level anomaly on the last two bosses, tier set token distribution, Great Vault credit rules, entrance coordinates, the wing structure, and the Glory of the Venomous Raider mount/achievement list all live on the companion Venomous Abyss Raid Overview page, along with a practical week-one gearing plan.

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